My Blog

Elements of Magic (Reclaiming core class) in Pittsburgh, PA

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We (Amoret and myself) are gauging interest for the timing of the Elements of Magic class we will be offering through Bone and Briar within the next few months. It will be offered on 6 (mostly) consecutive Fridays. We can start as early as the final week in July or the last week in August. There will be one week off in August for the July start and up to 2 Fridays in the beginning of October which would put a long space between the 5th and final class of the August start class.

Elements of Magic is a class that delves into the elements of Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit through visualization, trance, ritual, movement, and spell work. It is a core class of Reclaiming and it serves as a basis on which all Reclaiming rituals are built. Focusing will, deepening vision, and empowering yourself to act in the world are the tools you will learn and these will be useful in all parts of your life. Cost is $60 up front (save $30!) or $15 per class if you pay as you go. We ask that applicants be committed to attending all classes.

If you are interested, please send an email to thewitches@boneandbriar.com and let us know if you have a timing preference.

Monday Blogging – I love the Internet!

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Overall, I love the Internet. Sometimes it is frustrating, and angering, and just plain full of stupid, but mostly I love the tech that allows me to connect with people from all over the globe. I also love the video tech of the Internet. Skype, Google Hangout, TinyChat. Seeing people I’m talking to is great. Modern day conference calls that allow seeing facial expressions, hand waving, and heads thrown back in laughter. These things make me happy. Very happy!

So, to make this a religious post – I use this tech to keep in contact with my co-religionists, my fellow initiates, my up-and-coming initiates, students, etc. I like that if we have things to go over and time is short, or traveling is not feasible we have this option. Even locally we have this option. I still prefer in person, yes, but options! The Internet Haz Them! I like the timing of this lifetime very much because of this. Huzzah!

Reminder of my available services

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Prices of services vary.

Teaching/facilitating: varies by event, please contact me.

Custom spiritual workings: varies, please contact me.

Spiritual midwifery: billed at $75/hour

A sampling of midwifery options:

    • ritual arts
    • personal practices for connecting to the Seen and Unseen fully and with Joy
    • Priestessing transitions (work, illness, relationships, birth, death, other transformations)
    •  trance work
    • healing sacred wounds
    • [your needs here]

Bone or oracle card readings: billed at $30 for the average 30 minute reading; longer readings billed at $1 per addition minute.

Please use contact form to initiate any of these offerings.

I also have an Etsy shop!

 

On being surprised when people act as they actually are (tardy Monday blogging)

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)1 Comment

Well, 2 days late, damnit. Where does the time go? So, Wednesday blogging.

When people are honest about who they are, how they behave, and their actions show consistently this truth, why am I surprised? I should not be. They have been truthful with me. I have seen them in action. I have acknowledged certain truths about them and love them anyway. (Duh. Humans, flawed.) And yet. And yet and yet and yet when their truth has a less than positive impact on me I am all o_O for a bit – surprise!

This is a flaw in me. Do I think I am oh so special I will get better different treatment than the rest of the world? Do I think because this is a person who loves me I’ll escape the less pleasant parts of their personality? Apparently I do think that. Why? Time proves me wrong. I get my feelings hurt. When I examine my hurt, when I sink deeply and Listen I hear the same thing over and again: “This is Who They Are. Why are you surprised?”

Like I said to ye daughter a few weeks ago about a friend’s behaviour, “Stop being surprised.”

It seems I needed to hear it as well as say it.

Community Warning: Facebook Predator

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Camilla Laurentine's avatarFoxglove & Firmitas

I’ve spent the last 48 hours stewing and stunned over a situation that has come back from 2012… Pagans and Polytheists on Facebook, please be on the look-out for a man wishing to assume a female identity or woman in our community messaging you and wishing to talk about headcovering, clothing, or conversion. The situation may not be quite as innocent as it seems.

In August and early September of 2012, members of the all-female headcovering group Occulta Femina on Facebook were getting messaged by a member of the group who claimed to be a pre-transition trans-woman (Note: I am not attacking trans people. I am not saying this is because said person is trans, though I have my questions if that fact is true or not. What this person is doing has nothing to do with that, but uses it as an opening to start pulling you into this…

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Monday blogging – Why Elliot Rodger is a product of patriarchy

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)1 Comment

“when she was 7, a boy pushed her on the playground
she fell headfirst into the dirt and came up with a mouthful of gravel and lines of blood chasing each other down her legs
when she told her teacher what happened, she laughed and said ‘boys will be boys honey don’t let it bother you
he probably just thinks you’re cute’
but the thing is,
when you tell a little girl who has rocks in her teeth and scabs on her knees that hurt and attention are the same
you teach her that boys show their affection through aggression
and she grows into a young woman who constantly mistakes the two
because no one ever taught her the difference
‘boys will be boys’
turns into
‘that’s how he shows his love’
and bruises start to feel like the imprint of lips
she goes to school with a busted mouth in high school and says she was hit with a basketball instead of his fist
the one adult she tells scolds her
‘you know he loses his temper easily
why the hell did you have to provoke him?’
so she shrinks
folds into herself, flinches every time a man raises his voice
by the time she’s 16 she’s learned her job well
be quiet, be soft, be easy
don’t give him a reason
but for all her efforts, he still finds one
‘boys will be boys’ rings in her head
‘boys will be boys
he doesn’t mean it
he can’t help it’
she’s 7 years old on the playground again
with a mouth full of rocks and blood that tastes like copper love

con’t here

Fortesa Latifi – Boys Will Be Boys(And Why That Is The Stupidest Thing You Could Ever Say To A Little Girl)

Flashback 2005 – Monday blogging

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)2 Comments

(I missed a week. Oops!)

Back in 2005 an online friend had a witchcraft course running in a forum. The tradition she co-created was Wiccan based. That trad was not for me, but one of the pieces of course work I found very intriguing. It was to rewrite the Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente in our own words  with what the deities mean to us after meditating on the charge. Here is my rewrite:

The Charge of the Goddess

by PJVJ (Modified from Doreen Valiente’s Charge of the Goddess)

Listen to the words of the Great Mother; she who of old

was also called among men Artemis, Astarte, Athene, Dione,

Melusine, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Dana, Arianrhod, Isis,

Brid, and by many other names.

 I am the cut in the leaf and the tiny insect underneath. I am the wild goose and soaring wind. I am your joyous burst of laughter and your most bitter tear. I flit at the edges of your imagination and tease in your dreams. I am the base of all that you are and that you will become. I am the love – in nature, in art, in music, in laughter, in sex, in you. I am the despair – in light, in darkness, in words, in crowds, in loneliness, in you. I am always with you. I am the Honor. I am the Humility. I am the Reverence. I am the Peace. I am the Joy of All things.

Meet with kindred spirits, once a month when the moon is full, and invoke my presence, my joy, my desire; and fulfill your need. Call me and I shall join you in your rite.  Know that all acts, all manners, of love and pleasure come through me. Rejoice in my presence and raise voice, hands and feet to me. Sing! Dance! Laugh! Seek my wisdom – all of my wisdom.

Hear ye the words of the Star Goddess; she in the dust

of whose feet are the hosts of heaven, and whose body

encircles the universe.

Look up! Look down! I am everywhere. I am here in your house. I am out in the fields. I am above you in the sky. I am below you in the middle earth. I surround the universe with my ample self and I reach inside you and light the flame – of existence, of knowledge, of love, of eternity. Seek everywhere at once for me, but know this to be true – if what you seek you do not see first within you, you shall never find it outside of you.

I am the beginning and end, the above and below, the seen and unseen. I was there to smell your first breath and I will be there blowing your last breath away. And when you rise again I will be there with you. I am All that Is and all that Is is Me.

Copyright © 2005 (Boneweaver) Pamela V Jones